Wednesday, 27 January 2010

In recent years, we in the Conservative Party, may have inadvertently given the impression, that Boris Johnson's chairmanship of the Metropolitan Police Authority was a vital part of making London safer and a sign of the strong leadership the Conservatives would provide nationally.

Manifesto commitments such as "I will chair the Metropolitan Police Authority," "I will use my influence as Mayor and chair of the MPA to reduce the burden of form-filling" and headlines such as "Commisioner Boris" and "Boris would become Police Commissioner" may have suggested to some that he would personally take charge of London policing.

We now realise that his time is far better spent elsewhere and we would like to apologise for any confusion caused.

"It is important for the Mayor to take a public lead, so I will chair the Metropolitan Police Authority. I will take personal responsibility. No offence will be too trivial to demand my attention. No challenge will be so big that I shrug my shoulders and pass the buck. "

That rather large buck has now been passed to his Deputy Kit Malthouse.

The far less trivial challenge of writing a £250k column for the Daily Telegraph, will remain firmly in Boris's hands.

Green Party member of the MPA Jenny Jones said today:

"The Met are facing difficult times ahead, with budgets being cut in all areas. The chair of the MPA needs to take the time to understand this complex organisation to provide effective leadership. Boris Johnson has not really been involved from the beginning and perhaps feels it is time to stop pretending"

Liberal Democrat MPA member Dee Doocey welcomed the move:

"This is welcome news as the Mayor has never been on top of this incredibly important job. I just hope that unlike Boris Johnson that Kit Malthouse actually reads and understands the Met's budget and then sets out to immediately reverse the damaging cuts in police numbers which the Mayor has for so long denied."

Labour MPA member Joanne McCartney said:

"This is another key election promise broken. Boris said the Mayor should be directly accountable for crime but, just as he plans to slash police numbers and funding, he cuts and runs. If he's too busy maybe he should spend more time on London and less earning £250,000 a year from the Telegraph."

The real reason for Boris's decision to stand down from the MPA is not yet clear.

Conservative Assembly Members were apparently not told about it in advance, and Boris only gave a cursory explanation at today's Mayor's Questions.

Quite where that leaves the Tories' reported plans to make Boris police commissioner is anyone's guess.

But with their other plan to scrap the MPA altogether, this could all just be a move to distance Boris from it ahead of time.

"Mr Johnson is understood to receive handwritten memos from the Prince “every few months”. Sources also claim the Mayor has met Charles at Clarence House every three or four months.

It raises questions over how far Charles influenced the Chelsea Barracks housing project. The development was dropped last June by its Qatari backers after Charles wrote to them criticising its modernist appearance."

Of course there's nothing wrong with Prince Charles writing to the Mayor. Where the problem lies, is when the nature of that correspondence is withheld from the public.

"Political blogger Adam Bienkov, who submitted the FoI request, said: “Prince Charles chose to get involved in a highly political planning decision so he should play by the same rules as everyone else. If our future king is interfering with democratic processes then we should be told.

“Boris Johnson has spoken about the importance of open government. He needs to stand by his word now and release this correspondence.”

If the Prince and the Mayor's involvement in the Chelsea Barracks decision was all above board then they've got nothing to worry about.

Just release all of the correspondence so that we can decide for ourselves.

Boris Johnson has written to London Assembly Members asking them to "not participate" at an upcoming summit with train operators.

The summit would have been a good opportunity for London politicians to question our notoriously unaccountable train operators.

However, in a letter sent out to Assembly Members this week Boris writes that:

"As you are aware, when I was elected as Mayor of London I made a commitment to hold a summit with train operating companies serving the Greater London area. I am writing to invite you to attend as an observer, to the summit on the 12th February. Given the time constraints, as an observer I ask that you do not participate in the business of the meeting."

AMs have been badgering Boris about this "emergency summit" ever since he promised to hold one in his manifesto.

Initially promised within his "first few weeks" in power, the summit was inexplicably allowed to slip.

Caroline Pidgeon AM: "I would have thought it would be wise to have a meeting with them urgently to try to bash their heads together and try to make progress on this, so why have you not met with them and will you now commit to meet with them to try to get this deal signed as soon as possible?"

Boris: "The reason I have not met with them, as you will appreciate, is because we are trying to do the deal before we have the summit. Like most summits the summit is basically intended to be totally pre-cooked by the Sherpas of the summit and nobody particularly wants - least of all me - all the TOCs to arrive at a summit where we have a row and a walk out. I want to have a glorious summit in which we walk out having done the deal."

“We are delighted that Mayor Johnson should visit a housing development in Greenwich. Planning for the development began in 2006 when Greenwich Council agreed to sell the land to a housing association. Funding was then identified from central Government and Greenwich Council granted planning permission on 18 May 2008, within days of Mayor Johnson’s election."

Over the last eighteen months I have submitted a number of Freedom of Information requests to City Hall.

All of these have been answered either dead on, or some time after the twenty working-day deadline.

Over Christmas I sent a request for copies of all correspondence between the Mayor and Prince Charles.

Although this has still not received a response, I was surprised to see that a very similar request was fulfilled within just two days

So what was it about Darryl's request that demanded such quick attention and my response which didn't?

Could it be that the documents released to Darryl reveal the Mayor in a good light and the documents withheld from me do not?

I emailed them to ask.

Dear Public Liaison unit,

I submitted a FOI request for all correspondence between Prince Charles and the Mayor last month. For some reason I did not get a response or an indication of when I would receive a response, although I understand through another employee that you did receive it.

Can I ask why this is taking so long when a very similar request has been answered within days?

The Freedom of Information request you submitted last month is receiving attention. For your information the 20 working day deadline for response to your request is 27 January 2010, but we aim to reply to you as soon as possible.

The request to which you refer in your email was on a different matter.

A different, and less politically convenient matter obviously.

Now I've no doubt that I will eventually get a response from the Mayor. But can I really trust that all relevant correspondence will be released?

Boris Johnson is facing calls for an internal review over how a Freedom of Information request relating to the appointment of a key London arts post was handled after it emerged relevant emails were not included in the information released.

The relevant (and politically inconvenient) emails were later leaked to the Guardian.

So what role does the Mayor's private office and political aides have in deciding which information is released to which Londoners and when?

79. "Overall crime on the Tube and DLR is down by 8%. Robbery is down by 29.2%, violent crime is down 2.6% and public disorder offences are down by 4.5%."

Yes but Gun enabled crime has gone up by 67.1%, Homophobic crime is up by 27.6% Rape is up 22%, other sexual offences are up 2.2%, Residential burglary is up by 7.5%, business robbery is up 3.3%, Residential burglary is up 7.5%, and racist crime is up by 6.9%

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling does provide us with a fantastic quote though. One for Boris to cut out and keep:

"There are plenty of inefficiencies in policing which could be tackled, but instead ministers are presiding over plans that will lead to fewer police officers on the beat. There is a complete vacuum of leadership at the moment, and no sense of direction."

“This report to Cabinet shows exactly what we already knew – that the Mayor of London’s plans for an estuary airport are completely pie in the sky.

“His feasibility study has not taken into account so many things such as the distance it would be from London and whether passengers or airlines would actually want this, it has ignored the fact that there is a port importing a huge quantity of Liquid Natural Gas everyday and has made only a very arbitrary study of the transport links needed.

“I urge as many people as possible to sign our petition and help us stop this ill thought out airport."

The Conservative leader of Kent County Council Paul Carter has also joined the campaign against the airport.

Andrew Gilligan at the Telegraph: "The real foolishness of all this is that there’s actually an excellent, and true, case to be made against today’s fare changes. With their single fare rising by 20 per cent, there’s no question that bus travellers are being hammered, even though they are the group least able to pay. Bus passengers tend to be poorer, more inner-city and more Labour-voting while more prosperous, more suburban, more Tory-voting rail users are protected."

Of course most readers will have ceremonially garrotted themselves before reaching that bit, but at least he includes it.

It's just a shame that when Ken put up bus fares to £1 (and then later reduced them to 90p) Gilligan described the rises as "monstrous" and "extortionate."

But when Boris raises them to £1.20 in the middle of a recession, Andrew has a slightly different spin on things:

"SO there I was, all set to write an angry piece about Boris Johnson’s “massive fare rises.” (The fare changes happen tomorrow, by the way). But then I thought: you know, I’d better check the new fares, hadn’t I?"

So he checks the new National Rail fares instead (which Boris doesn't control) and what do you know, he gets the figures he wants.